On Wed, 1 Jul 2009, Christopher Lueg wrote:
I think it was Steve Whittaker who pointed out this kind of purpose-driven media switching when analyzing the emerging use of instant messengers in corporate settings some 10 years ago (happy to search for the paper if of interest)
The paper that I had in mind references works that say the above but presents different findings: "Contrary to prior research, we found that the primary use of workplace IM was for complex work discussions. Only 28% of conversations were simple, single-purpose interactions and only 31% were about scheduling or coordination. Moreover, people rarely switched from IM to another medium when the conversation got complex." from: The character, functions, and styles of instant messaging in the workplace E Isaacs, A Walendowski, S Whittaker, DJ Schiano, C Kamm Proc 2002 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/587078.587081 best regards christopher -- Dr. Christopher Lueg Professor of Computing University of Tasmania Private Bag 100 Hobart TAS 7001, Australia christopher.lueg@utas.edu.au http://www.cis.utas.edu.au/users/clueg/ CRICOS Provider Code: 00586B